The Conditions Element

This element allows you to define conditions which can be used to dynamically change the installer, e.g. the panels shown, the variables set, files parsed, files executed and much more. When you define a condition it will get a type and an id. The id has to be unique. Conditions can be referenced based on this id (e.g. with the RefCondition).

When you define a set of conditions, you just have to write as many <condition> tags as you like.

Condition Types

Dynamic Conditions

There is a number of built-in condition types in IzPack which can be used in an installation description, which are evaluated dynamically at a given moment as soon as they are referenced, depending on the installer state, the processed user inputs and the parameters given to them:

Pre-defined Conditions

There is a number of built-in conditions which are statically pre-set on launching the installation and which can be only referenced by their ID:

izpack.windowsinstall True if the current OS is (any) Windows.

izpack.windowsinstall.xp True if the current OS is Windows XP.

izpack.windowsinstall.2003 True if the current OS is Windows Server 2003.

izpack.windowsinstall.vista True if the current OS is Windows Vista.

izpack.windowsinstall.7 True if the current OS is Windows 7.

izpack.windowsinstall.8True if the current OS is Windows 8.

izpack.macinstall True if the current OS is Mac OS X.

izpack.linuxinstall True if the current OS is (any) Linux.

izpack.solarisinstall True if the current OS is (any) Solaris.

izpack.solarisinstall.x86 True if the current OS is (any) Solaris x86.

izpack.solarisinstall.sparc True if the current OS is (any) Solaris Sparc.

Using Conditions

Defining Conditions

<conditions> Element

Conditions are defined in the installation definition as nested <condition> elements of the <conditions/> element.

<condition> - Attributes

The following attributes must be set in a <condition> element definition:

Attribute

Usage

type

The type of the condition. For built-in types, this is the lowercase portion of the condition class name without condition appended (variable,packselection,java, ...). Custom condition types should be referenced by the full qualified class name, e.g. de.dr.rules.MyCoolCondition.

id

The id of the condition. This will be used to refer to this conditions in other elements

<condition> - Nested Elements

The condition element can have several child elements depending on the condition type. For instance, the VariableCondition has a name and value child element to specify, which variable should have a certain value to fullfil this condition.

Here is an example which defines four conditions, two VariableConditions, a JavaCondition and a AndCondition which will refer to two of the first conditions:

Referencing Conditions

Conditions are referenced as optional attributes of several other elements in a installation definition or from IzPack resources:

as condition attribute

Referencing A Number Of Conditions In One Expression

Simple Expression Language

From IzPack 3.11 on, you don't have to define compound conditions because you can use a simple expression language. The language supports the following operators:

^

an operator for the Xor Conditon

&&

an operator for the And Condition

||

an operator for the Or Condition

!

an operator for the Not Condition

These simple expressions DO NOT follow the usual boolean logic with precedence rules. Instead, they are evaluated left to right in a simple way.

Example:

does not equal

but is the same like

.So you should define complex conditions using the xml structure or use the Complex expression language.

Complex expression language

With IZPACK-577 and IZPACK-581 fixed and released, you can also use a more Complex expression language that evaluates using the boolean precedence rules, which is also reflected in the following table. The higher an operator is, the higher is its precedence.